


Seaweed

by Assimbya



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Homer - The Iliad and the Odyssey
Genre: F/M, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 03:25:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/303209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Assimbya/pseuds/Assimbya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Separating oneself from Calypso is not easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seaweed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stop_theworld](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stop_theworld/gifts).



Her pale hair clings to his skin, sticky as seaweed, so that he thinks that they shall never be untangled from one another. On her island, there is no need to get up from bed - sometimes, they lie there together for hours, watching the sky change with the passage of Helios' sun across the sky. Even when they are done with sex, her hands play over his skin compulsively, consistent as the ocean waves. She talks to him sometimes, but she is not like clever, chattering Circe - her words are, as often as not, calm observations. The weather, how the sea looked when last she watched it, an unusual bird she noticed perching nearby.

He tries to ask her questions, sometimes, "What did you do here before I came?" he asked her once, his tone playful, "Did you ensnare other stranded sailors?" But she smiled like a sphinx, like a goddess, and did not answer.

One night, he asks her when she will let him go. She draws back, and he regrets the loss of the softness of her hair on his arms. She stands, gathering the pale blue chiton about her white limbs, and leaves, bare feet soft against the packed earth of the floor.

He follows her after a few minutes, his body, hardened by years of war and sea, not so fleet as her immortally youthful legs. She is walking along the shore - back and forth, back and forth. He can see the hem of her chiton trailing in the water, her fine hair tangled by sea wind. He runs to her, looking for salt tears in the corners of her eyes, but she does not stop walking, and her face is still, impassive, warm stone. After several moments, during which he stands there, feeling the chill wind upon his calves, she stops and turns to him, wrapping long, beautiful, spider-like fingers over his shoulders and pushing him down into the sand.

She does not take off her chiton as they make love, even as the waves break higher and higher up the dunes and the finely woven, carefully dyed fabric grows heavy and waterlogged. He does take off his, and his war-scarred skin is hardly irritated by the sand against it. In that moment he forgets the dangers held by the sea, by Poseidon who hates him, and absorbs only the rhythm of it, of the waves washing against their entwined legs, water warm from hours in the noonday sun.

But then, as the warm culmination of pleasure overcomes him, a larger waves breaks than has yet, washing high over his face, and he can feel her hands on his shoulders again, holding him down. For a terrifying moment he cannot breathe, and he remembers shipwreck, his arms and legs tiring from hours trying to keep himself afloat. He feels, does not think, and is afraid, afraid of her, afraid of the ocean, afraid of the deep, elemental force he knows exists in both.

The wave recedes, though, and he can breathe, in great gasps. She kisses all of him, licking the salt from his skin, and murmurs against his throat, her voice deep and beautiful, "You're mine. You're mine, Odysseus, and I'll never let you leave me."

At that moment, he is glad.

  



End file.
